Series 10 Trailer

Step into the ancient world with our deep dive into Genesis, our most ambitious series yet.

Travel from the text of Genesis to the tablets of Assyria with expert Dr Caleb Howard. Explore what the original Hebrew reveals beneath the surface and discover how even data can become a tool for helping us grow in understanding with analyst Dr James Bejon – and this is just episode one!

Led by Tyndale House Principal, Dr Peter Williams, this extended series takes you deep into Genesis chapters 1–9 with clarity, curiosity, and visual richness. This is a series meant to be seen. Join us on YouTube, subscribe, and experience it for yourself.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:09

Hello, thank you for joining us on the Tyndale House Podcast again. I'm Tony Watkins, Fellow for Public Engagement here at Tyndale House, and I'm joined by Peter Williams, our principal. We want to spend a few minutes giving you a little introduction to the next series of the podcast, which is quite different from things we've done before. You'll be familiar if you've been subscribing to the podcast on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast from, you'll be familiar with the interviews that we've done. But now we're going to do more of a Bible study with Peter and two members of our Old Testament team. It's going to be a deep dive into Genesis 1 to 9. So we thought we'd spend just a few minutes giving you a little bit of a flavor of what to expect. So, Peter, tell us uh firstly about who's involved in in this Bible study and what you're doing.

SPEAKER_00 0:57

Yeah, so I'm I'm I'm doing it along with Caleb Howard, who is our uh seriologist on staff. So he reads the ancient cuneiform writing, uh, Akkadian and Sumerian, knows all about the ancient Near East, heads up our Old Testament project. And uh James Bijon, who's a data analyst, worked for the Bank of England for nine years, uh, very successfully predicting the UK economy, then uh has moved over to work for us, um, got a master's and and PhD in things related to the Old Testament, and uh we are a a group of uh friends and geeks together, uh enjoying talking about um Genesis, it really uh arose out of a Bible study that we were already doing, uh just working systematically through uh the Old Testament, and I thought we really need to share this.

SPEAKER_01 1:47

Great. Uh people are going to love this, I think. But um maybe some people would be concerned that with with three academics doing a Bible study, particularly when you know we've got a seriologist and and and so on, is it going to be too high level? Is it this just for the Bible geeks or or is it more accessible?

SPEAKER_00 2:07

So what I say is it's I think it's unique in terms of uh what we're doing, but we are really in enjoying uh talking to each other and trying to speak in uh very simple ways. So, for instance, in Genesis 1, one of the questions I can raise with Caleb is, well, what about the comparisons people make between Genesis 1 and other uh stories of creation from the ancient world? And he's an expert on that, and so he's able to address that. And those are the sorts of things that we can look at that I think will be of uh wide interest, and yet we're um enjoying uh a deep dive. Yes, we're gonna talk about particular words uh here and there, and yet people are going to be able to pick up um areas of certainty or uncertainty that we have about how to understand things. There are different opinions sometimes we have, certainly different temperaments. Uh uh and that's all part of uh hopefully the enjoyable mix people are gonna have.

SPEAKER_01 3:02

Yeah, absolutely. Well, obviously, Genesis 1 is a little controversial in Christian circles. There are different views. What are you doing about those kinds of things?

SPEAKER_00 3:10

Well, we are focusing on what we know about. We are people who know about the ancient world, about transmission of texts, about language, and not people who know about physics and biology, especially. So we're just talking about the things we know about, talking with each other, the questions uh that arise with us. And I think uh people are going to find that of of wide relevance because we are all convinced that this is the word of God. Uh it's amazing. Um Genesis is just astounding as literature, but also in terms of what it tells us about God, ourselves, the world, uh, how it hangs together, how the whole of scripture hangs together. And we're excited about that. We are wanting to convey that to people. And I think uh that will rub off on people, we hope.

SPEAKER_01 3:50

Yeah, absolutely. And as well as talking about the Hebrew, you're also very deliberately using both the ESV and the NIV translations as as you do this Bible study. Uh why are you doing that?

SPEAKER_00 4:00

Well, I mean, uh we're all got the Hebrew in front of us. Uh and uh we I'm on the ESV committee. A lot of the work on NIV was done by people who spent time at Tinder House. We're not just uh uh working for one particular translation, because we would say when people do serious Bible study, it's worthwhile looking at multiple um translations, and so we would encourage people to do that um and to sort of track what's going on with individual words. I sometimes say we're not all nutrition specialists, but we can all take some interest in what we feed ourselves and others in the same way we're not all specialists on the language of the Bible, but we can still take uh some interest in what exactly is going on with specific specific words, because we want to know this question, what is God saying to us? And so that's where I think it is relevant to use multiple translations.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

Excellent. So what do you hope people are going to be able to take away from this?

SPEAKER_00 4:54

Well, I hope they're gonna be excited by the word of God, they're gonna be um uh given confidence in it and uh its beauty, its coherence, and uh they're going to see what uh things one can be confident about where there are areas of of questions uh that we might want to pursue further. That all should uh come out in um uh some somewhat um boisterous ripartee that we have amongst us ourselves at at times. Uh and um you know we we're able to tease each other, so I think people will also enjoy it. It certainly won't be dry.

SPEAKER_01 5:29

Uh you are you certainly are going to enjoy this. This is great fun and uh very stimulating. I think this is going to be a series that you'll love. Do make sure that you are subscribed either on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast, Rob, so that you know about new episodes when they're released. And do check out all of the interviews that we've filmed in the past. There'll be plenty more of those to come in the future. Thanks for joining us. Bye bye.